No takers for spot water billing

The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) plans to outsource spot-billing and collections to private agencies has received lukewarm response.Just 50 per cent of private agencies have bagged the allotments, forcing the Water Board to issue fresh notifications for allotments to agencies, on a firstcome- first-serve basis.Out of 192 dockets to be outsourced, some 90 dockets were outsourced, while for remaining dockets, there was no response.Dockets still to be outsourced are Charminar (7), Misrigunj (16), Mehdipatnam (18), Narayanguda (9), LB Nagar (10), Sainikpuri (11) and Uppal-Kapra (26).Last month, the Water Board had decided to convert all dockets into spotbilling and collection with hand-held online electronic point of sale (EPOS) machines. Private firms were invited to undertake billing and collection.HMWS&SB officials told Expresso each docket would have between 1,000 to 1,500 consumer account numbers (CANs). Under the system, a certain number of consumers can be managed by one meter reader to form a ‘docket’ and allotted to the outsourcing agency.Docket of CANs would be loaded in an EPOS machine and selected firms had to pay a specified amount for each docket in advance. After depositing the money, the machine would be activated for issue of receipts.The collection mechanism would be automatically locked once total amount collected reached the deposit amount paid by the agency. The lock would be released for subsequent collections only after money was re-deposited, according to officials. Value of transactions up to `500 is `10 per CAN per month, for transactions above `500 and up to `1000, `15 per CAN, for above `1,000, it will be `20 per CAN and anything above `10,000, it will be `25 per CAN. If any bill was found pending after 15th of every month, a penalty would be levied, officials added.